An American Voice

The Secretary of State would be directed not to enter into any reciprocal trade agreements with any nation engaged in religious and racial persecution, according to a bill introduced last week by Senator Warren K. Barbour of New Jersey. The measure is aimed against Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

It is difficult to predict whether this bill has any chance to pass. The fact, however, that such a proposal has been introduced on the basis that “religious and racial persecution are repugnant to the American sense of justice” is indicative of what American leaders think of the anti-Jewish persecutions now going on in Germany.

“While it is not the duty of the United States of America to meddle in the internal affairs of other nations and to dictate what their moral and religious standards should be, the situation has assumed so wide a scope, and is so menacing in its threat to the hard-won liberties of mankind, that it has become a direct concern to the people of every land, whose pillars rest upon the premise that all men are created equal,” the bill says, urging that trade pacts with nations practicing anti-Semitism be barred.